I read the Globe and Mail every day and love the wine reviews. The only problem is that Beppi often reviews wines we just can’t get a hold of here in BC. But thanks to my intrepid spouse and a willing friend in Calgary, all of a sudden, I own a case!

Château d’Anglès hails from the Languedoc-Rousillon, one of those sexy up-and-comers on the French scene. The neatest thing about this one is the price (after we added in the shipping fee for two couriered parcels from Calgary the bottles came to just over $25 each) and the fact that Eric Fabre is the former winemaker from the storied Bordeaux Château Lafite-Rothschild. He has moved his family to the southwest corner of France, purchased a winery and vineyard at ‘La Clape’, a nature conservatory on the coast of the Mediterranean, and set about producing award winning wines for all to enjoy.

The La Clape Grand Vin, 2007 has a deep garnet core moving to a lightly bricked rim with solid legs. Clean and developing on the nose, it’s brimming with intense, late picked blackberries, cassis, vanilla and smoke.

Dry with better than average acidity, medium tannin, medium alcohol and a full body, it offers solid flavours of blackberries, black plums, black cherries, vanilla tones and almost a sense of ‘beach bonfire’, like a late summer evening on the beach with cool sand and the smokey fire burning away – blackberry bushes oozing into the evening air.

The finish is medium plus. A blend of 55% Mourvèdre and 30% Syrah with 10% Grenache and a bit of Carignan and unfiltered (beware the crunchy bits), it reminded me of the Spanish blends I love with charcuterie and cheese – a little light for my taste with steaks.

Definitely drink now but can be held for 5 years for further ageing. Beautifully balanced fruit, alcohol, acidity and tannin.

We ended up emailing with the winery itself and it took a couple of weeks for the case to reach us – and I’m so glad it did. I hope we’ll be able to find some of Fabre’s other products on the BC market at some point. They are celebrated and have received many awards – and yet the price point is so accessible. And you know, there’s a pretty cool picture of Jancis Robinson tasting their white blend on the front page of their website.